It’s not my first rodeo is a song of a lovely hardcore band called Texas in July. It’s August and I have been listening to that song very many times since I met you. Actually, we never really met for the first time. We were simply connected. Connected in Berlin, where later we met. Maybe we should choose this as the version to tell people whenever they ask us, how our paths crossed. It will make their imagination run wild and you can keep that mysterious secrecy of yours. Your beloved secrecy always added to the rodeo our connection has been. Although I know you need rider as well as horse for a rodeo, I’m not sure who is who. Controlled as you are, you should be the rider, trying to influence my life, setting the course of our journey. To me it feels more like being on top, stubbornly refusing to be thrown off.

Trying to define my position in this play, it is very clear to me, what I don’t want to be. A tamed horse or a rider sitting too comfortable and satisfied in the saddle.

Why not the tamed horse? Oh, I tried marriage. It was an attempt to join this grown up’s world and playing to society’s rules. It was also a huge failure. I am not made for cages, not made for illiterate husbands who try to make me feel small. I am also not the perfect housewife – not that I wouldn’t be able to fulfill that task. I simply refuse to be reduced to it. Given the fact that I still romantically and childishly dream of Mr Darcy and the possibility of a warm marriage, I give naive credit to that institution and blame the failure on my bad casting abilities for an appropriate partner. It took me some time to realize how bad the choice had been – I blame that mainly on hormones. It’s always the easiest way to excuse one’s unacceptable behaviour – but once I did, I quit and I left. Like a wild and very fed up horse I threw off an incompetent rider, grabbed the little pony my son was then and galloped to a life that was finally mine again.

So there I was. I had tested what society set as the major goal in life: marriage, a child and the outlook to 30 years of waiting to become grandmother. No one can say I haven’t tried. Apart from my son, who is the sunshine in every day of my life, there was not much in it for me. Society can go that way, I rather take another direction. Too comfortable, too smooth, too secure. It’s all too boring to me.

I learned to follow my heart. Learned that the risk of it’s being temporary broken was worth the experience. Learned to differentiate between raised fingers of well-meant warning and blackmailing pressure of persons who want me to exist in morally correct constructions. My heart doesn’t care much about moral correctness. It just wanders off and makes me set my personal moral standards. Neither society, nor persons pretending to want the best for me,will ever set my limits. I do that. Well, I and men who have plans not cooperating with mine.

One of those men refusing to cooperate with my plans is you. Egon Olsen as I am, I had to realize I neither can plan, nor should. Some things just flow. In our case they flew through periods of passion, passionate hate and passing over to whatever we are now. While you decided for us to be friends and lately declared me to be your roommate, I still try to find terms for what you are to me. Maybe the passion period was the only time in our life in which we felt the same. The moment I saw you, I wanted to touch you. The moment I touched you, I wanted to be with you. The more I was with you, the more I never wanted our conversations to end. While we talked and discussed, I realized that it’s not just the looks, the touch of your skin, the smell, but also your knowledge, experience and advice I never want to fade away from my life. I can’t say that feeling has declined. Additional I had never done anything that adventurous before. Flying to other towns to see someone. Paying last minute prices to hit a plane just to be touched. You turned my life upside down and made the party increase to level gorgeous.

“Two faced liar” is what Texas in July scream halfway through their song. I wanted to slam that in your face, too. I never did. Basically, because you theoretically didn’t lie. You just missed giving information about the female who inherits the position in your life I wished was mine. The passionate hate period was short but emotional. Once I was over frustration, had regained my life-is-a-party-attitude, I started playing around with other companions. Funny enough, you monitored my actions, still made those smug remarks that make me blush and encouraged me to party on by taking a flight to Paris. I remember the moment when something changed inside of me. It was October, 26^th. We had had that perfect day at Invalides. I long-term borrowed a cup at the café, you told me off for being a thief, we both wondered why a short man like Napoleon was in need of such a giant tomb, the German and the Brazilian gazing at the French view on two World Wars, being shoved out last persons in the exhibition. We walked home in silence while the sun went down. I could hear both our footsteps echoing in the alley and I watched you walk on the streets, hands in the pockets of your jacket, while I balanced on the kerbstones. Right there in that moment I felt that I might not have to fear us meeting for the last time. Like a flash a thought crossed my mind. What if this was just the beginning? What if we would still meet in 30 years? What if we had both families, were both still discussing things we achieved? A warm feeling swept over me. How proud I would be to show you my Nobel-prize for literature. How happy I would be if you showed me pictures of your grandchildren. To be honest even I was surprised. I still like it to be pictures of our children and you to be around when they hand over that Nobel-prize. But in that moment I felt it would be enough if we still took interest in each others lives, still shared our thoughts and put trust in each other. The story about how to trust someone who is such a splendid secret hider is yet to be written.

The passing over was the strangest of all phases. While I was in adventure and passion mode, you decided to be truthful and loyal. Actually, it’s the right thing to do. I just wish you would give some consideration to the positions and persons available to fill in. You declared us to be friends. Sure. It opened up the option to meet as 70 years olds, but erased my hopes of spending the next thirty years in the passionate way I had imagined.

My plan.

Men’s plan.

Seldom do they match.

I swallowed frustration. I accepted your conditions. I flew over, just to be with you. I resisted impulses to be physical. Don’t believe I wouldn’t give a lot to have you touch my body again. Make me drown in emotion while you whisper dirty words into my ears. Don’t you think I miss the moments when your pants were open before I put my suitcase on the floor.

While I dream away how biutiful it would be to have that added to what we have now, I think of an advice I gave someone a few days ago. Asking me for help on topics like love life may be a waste of time, but the guy is young and was too desperate to know better. He suspected his girl-friend was cheating on him, because she doesn’t want to be with him anymore. With all the wisdom I could master, I declared he should let her go. If she recognized his value to her, she would come back out of free will. There would never be a way of forcing things. If she wouldn’t recognize his value, she was just not the person to spend time with, build hopes on or basically put, worth wasting any energy.

Texas in July ride through their song, while I ride through my thoughts about us.

I smile.

I know I love you.

I love to be with you.

If you want to be with me, you will.

My way I can set, yours not.

Maybe we aren’t at a rodeo at all. Maybe we are just two horses. If I could set not just me, but us, we would be those horses. Striding through life next to each other, because we like to share the happiness we experience on our way. Two horses and maybe some ponies.